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Washington Times Article

After working on All God's Children for five years, (and right now also having watched it 7 times at screenings in the last 4 weeks) I have to admit that I'm quite accustomed to the tone, the words and the stories in the film. So I'm always startled and saddened when I hear a description of the events of Mamou in someone else's words - making it fresh and upsetting all over again.

[...] the stories of more than 80 children whose days at a Christian & Missionary Alliance (C&MA) boarding school in Mamou, Guinea, in West Africa sound like something out of Abu Ghraib: savage beatings, sexual abuse, rape and sadistic punishments.

This article doesn't just focus on our film and thus reveals more information than we could include - e.g., about Marilyn Christman's additional personal experiences, reports of other abused MKs and the only two other investigations made public (Presbyterian Church - USA and United Methodist Church).

Please read the article and leave a comment on the article's page to let Julia Duin, The Washington Times and other reporters know that you are interested in this story. The abuse of MKs and the cover-up is much, much larger than what's depicted in our film and more reporting in national media is necessary to continue breaking down the wall of silence around this subject.

----------------------UPDATE 6/26/09:

The article as it was published originally contained a severe error, which has now finally been corrected in the online version. All the links in this post lead to the corrected article.

We are horrified at the thought that the printed version still exists with the error, which implicates men of crimes they did not commit. We were very careful in making the film to not name anyone who hadn't already been proven to be guilty. This is a very delicate subject matter and we wouldn't want anyone to be hurt unnecessarily - nor do we want the audience to have any reason to doubt the stories we tell.

As editors we work meticulously on every frame of our film to control every last detail - it can be a frustrating experience to then share your work and realize that you don't have control over how people perceive or interpret your work or the conversations around it. Of course in all this we are very appreciative of getting the story of the abused MKs out in the media at all. But it's important for us, the people in the film, all the survivors and the accused that this continues to be "truth telling" and not just "story telling".

This very limited-run calendar is not for sale! Instead, I would like to gift it to the first 5 people who pledge their support for my work through Patreon - and to the kind people who are already Patreon supporters. Deadline: January 7th, 2017.

All you have to do is pledge your support on my Patreon page: Patreon.com/LuciWest (for as low as $1 a month). You can cancel anytime. By being a patron you will get other early and even exclusive content and gifts...

If you're already supporting my work through Patreon, just send me a message that you'd like a calendar. If you're one of the first 5 people to respond, I'll send one your way.

The Moving Postcard World Travel Map is not just any kind of map, it's a world scratch-off map... that my dear friendJudith Hecktorgave me earlier this year. I had been waiting for just the right time to shoot a time-lapse video for you to show you all the countries where I've shot Moving Postcard videos in chronological order...

As you see when watching the video, it's not just a time-lapse video of me scratching off the countries and flags on the world travel map, but also a quick glimpse of a video from each of the 11 countries I visited (or lived in) during the 6 1/2 years of publishing Moving Postcard videos every week.
If you would like to see more 1-minute videos from these 11 countries, please check out the respective collections:Germany,Spain,USA,Czech Republic,Portugal,Thailand,United Kingdom,Brazil,Poland,Mexico, andCuba.
Thank you so much, Judith, for this awesome map. You sure know how to find amazing and meaningf…

There's nothing quite like a German Christmas Market (Weihnachtsmarkt).
And the Hamburg Christmas Market is probably my favorite. It's the
Weihnachtsmarkt of my childhood and probably the only one that serves
Fischbrötchen (fish on a roll).

This video of the Hamburg Christmas Market, I filmed last week at two
different markets that are near each other: the Weisser Zauber at
Jungfernstieg (on the Alster River) and the Hamburger Weihnachtsmarkt at
the Rathausmarkt (city hall square). I filmed this video before the attack on the Berlin Christmas Market.

For
several days, I contemplated if I should publish this video at all - in
the aftermath of such a tragedy. Then it became obvious: of course, I
would publish a German Christmas Market video this week! As a matter of
fact, by now I feel lucky that I had filmed such a video during my trip
back home to Germany so I could take a stand this week. It's very
importa…

The Hotel Nacional de Cuba and the Plaza de la Revolución are two of the
main sights worth visiting in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, Cuba.
In Vedado, you will also find the Cristóbal Colón Cemetery (check out my
video "Cristóbal Colón Cemetery, Havana (Cuba) – In Another Minute (317)") and the Afro-Cuban mecca of street art and culture Callejón de Hamel, which I might feature in another video...

In this week's video, I'd like to take you on a bit of a visual tour
of history. We start at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba (built in 1930),
drive a Cuban classic car taxi past a mural depicting the travel of the Granma yacht
(that brought the revolutionaries, including the Castro brothers,
Guevara and Cienfuegos, to Cuba in 1956 to overthrow the Batista regime)
and end at the Plaza de la Revolución, completed in 1959, the year
Fidel Castro came to power.